aka: Bomb Jump

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"For the next three hundred years, people who needed to get to the second floor used the only method available to them: shooting a rocket launcher at their feet. Yes, it was ridiculous, crippling, and awful, but what are you going to do? Not go to the second floor? Thatís where your bed is."

In most cases, this technique will hurt the player, so he has to consider the sacrifice of health (including possible fall damage) versus the benefit of the jump.

With that in mind, rocket jumping is either considered as an exploit of a game engine processing physics and explicit numerical damage, or considered as an acceptable break from reality in video games that just emphasizes how tough your One-Man Army really is. The game has to take into account, among possible other considerations: movement across the 'z'-axis (3D) or Y-axis (2D), splash damage that produces a kickback effect on both the player character and enemies, that rockets do not kill in one hit as a specific function of being hit with a rocket, and that explosive damage is dealt rather liberally. At the very least, the game attempts and fails at properly applying or understanding impulse and momentum.

Quake popularized the modern concept of aiming a rocket at your feet, jumping, and firing a rocket immediately after to gain a much higher altitude. It was initially discovered as a glitch, but was left in the game for one reason or another. Also a very important staple of Quake's sequels. It is used extensively here, especially after 3:20. A more unorthodox way to achieve the effect is to use a Spawn's death explosion for a similar boost. It's tricky to pull off, but can be a game changer in speedruns.

In Quake III: Arena, id managed to hit a very good ratio for the damage rockets inflict, knockback, and their speed in units per second. As such, rocket jumping became such an integral part of Quake 3 that an entire mod and subculture of the game was based around being able to conquer maps based on rocket jumping, plasma, strafing, and over bouncing technique. Exemplified in its height here.

Deathmatch Classic, Valve's tribute to Quake which was released in 2001, has an RPG which you can rocket jump with.

Tribes allowed players to shoot the Spinfusor (explosive blue frisbee launcher) at their feet for insane speed boosts and massive jumps; firing a spinfusor while jumping in the Classic mod for Tribes 2 allows you to jump well over a hundred meters into the air. In Ascend, pathfinder class has impact nitrons which can effectively used for extra boost due to their relatively low damage.

Doom was one of the first FPSs to feature this, albeit as a horizontal push rather than vertical jump. This was particularly notable as Doom didn't have any actual jump button. Marathon (with grenades), Quake, and Unreal Tournament followed.

Doom episode 3 has an exit to a secret level that is supposed to be accessed with this method. An invulnerability powerup is provided to assist the player in doing so. However, it is also possible to strafe-run into the secret, though much more difficult.

While it was possible to do a literal rocket-jump in Unreal Tournament, the method recommended by the game's tutorial was to use the Impact Hammer — a melee-only weapon that was essentially a powerful pneumatic piston which inexplicably could cause splash damage (including a slight push) to the wielder if "fired" at a nearby surface (like, say, the ground). Unreal Tournament 2004 continued this with its replacement Shield Gun, even going so far as to let you cushion some of the damage from landing after a "shield jump" with its eponymous Secondary Fire.

Taken to its logical conclusion with the practice of "trickjumping", in which rocket damage is turned off for the purpose of setting up complicated and difficult jumps. Need we ask why? Multiple examples can be found in this video, by the ambitiously-titled Infinite Trajectory team.

Several secrets in the Quake games, including a secret level in the second game, require rocket or grenade jumping to reach.

Quake II had an area that could only be reached by rocketjumping. It contained several goodies, and would trigger the message "You crazy rocket jumpers!".

An open-source game Xonotic has a laser gun designed for this. Minimal damage, but quite a lot of push. Rockets will get you even higher.

In Team Fortress 2, the Soldier and the Demoman can do this with rockets and stickybombs respectively. In theory, every class can do it, but only if an enemy shoots them (since there is no friendly fire). Of course, the technique was already present in the original. Both classes since received weapons specifically designed to be used to train this technique, as they deal no damage, and a sufficiently skilled player can cross the map in seconds.

The Soldier was consciously designed to rocket jump. Meet the Soldier features a rocket jump, and one game update even gave rocket jumping Soldiers a neat visual effect (their shoes catch fire, which somehow jets downwards like rocket exhaust). Becoming the final winner of the "War!" update gave him the Gunboats: shoes that replace his secondary weapon and reduce damage from his own rockets by 60%. The Uber Update also gave the Soldier the Mantreads, which adds Goomba Stomp to his Rocket Jumps.

The Beggar's Bazooka has a less intended, but even more effective, version: The explosions caused by overloading the launcher are much stronger than a normal rocket, and set off right next to the Soldier even while airborne. The result is essentially an explosion-powered jetpack that lets him cross the map in seconds.

Pyros can launch themselves with the assistance of an explosive projectile belonging to the other team. It actually ends up requiring even more effort than a regular rocket jump, due to the tighter timing, greater need for coordination, and the generally increased chance of being messily reduced to bits of asbestos suit and rubber. So-called W+M2 Pyros are known for such stunts, among others.

The Pyro later got a flare gun called The Detonator, which allows players to rocket jump with relative ease. Compared to rockets and stickies, the distance the Pyro can fling himself is extremely small. It's closer to the Scout's Double Jump than the Soldier's rocket jump. Applications are limited, but it can allow Pyros to access routes that were otherwise just barely out of reach.

The Demoman can also jump using his grenade launcher: although it's both trickier and less effective, it is the only option when using a loadout without stickybombs. The Iron Bomber's grenades can make this tactic more easy to do, since they have very little bounce and roll than the stock grenades. The Loose Cannon makes doing this more effective, working much like the Beggars Bazooka above in that you can have the explosion be right in front of you if you cook off the fuse for just long enough.

Since his update, the Engineer can manually fire his sentry's rockets to use them for rocket jumping. That way, he can reach places inaccessible for most classes (and place a teleporter exit on there). This is only one method of the "Sentry Jump", but the others are non-explosive and thus not this trope.

Team Fortress Classic had it, too. Rocket-jumping was possible with the Soldier's rockets, the Demoman's pipebombs, or with any kind of grenade, although grenades dealt significantly more damage. Since you could only deal armor damage against team mates in non-friendly fire games, you could also assist your teammates by rocket jumping them, and it was a particularly favored tactic in games like Hunted, where it would let the President bypass several nasty sniping points. Particularly effective grenade jumps could be performed with the concussion grenade (basically a grenade with little actual damage but huge knockback) used by Scouts and Medics, as it had much greater knockback/lift and it dealt a completely minimal amount of damage, making the Medic one of the preferred flag-capturing units. Notably difficult maps, such as 2fort, made flashbang jumps the only way to fly.

At least one map (epicenter) was completely broken due to the aforementioned practice of "concussion jumping". The point of said map was to carry a flag to a point in your enemy's base, and the map reset once this was done, after which the flags were locked up for a minute. On most servers with sufficiently skilled players, the match quickly devolved into races between the team's opposing scouts/medics, as two well-placed concussion jumps would take you from just outside the building where your flag was to the capture point. Everything and everyone else was irrelevant. It's breakage like this that led to grenades being removed altogether from Team Fortress 2.

Tower of Guns One of the few games to encourage mastering this skill. Every weapon and perk in the game has some way to be used for rocket jumping, eg: Major Moose + The Hand Cannon or Egon's Pride + Blue Grass. Most of the secrets, Such as reaching the Literal top of the Tower by escaping the Battlements, require Rocket jumping to reach them, assuming the player hasn't amassed an absurd number of the rare Double Jump upgrades through Sheer Luck.

It's possible to do this with grenades, but due to their power, this is usually done for fun, not for gameplay purposes. The ability to create chain reactions with grenades on the ground was especially entertaining when combined with the invincibility of vehicles in Halo: Combat Evolved.

Games from 2 onward have a collection of hidden skulls that affect the games' mechanics. For example you can find a skull that allowed Master Chief to turn invisible for a short duration instead of having a wimpy flashlight. Another skull makes all headshots pop people like plasma grenades. In Halo 2 itself, one essential skull that allows you to even get the rest of these skulls is the one appropriately called Sputnik. This skull makes all knockback caused by explosions and melee attacks about 5 times as powerful. This also allows players to get the bigger-than-big BFG of the game to play around with. This of course is only available on the game's hardest difficulty. The effects don't save when the game is turned off, meaning that players who want to be blown high have to find Sputnik again each time they turn on their Xbox.

Several of the multiplayer levels allowed you to grenade jump up to an area that you normally couldn't get to. If you brought a fully loaded sniper rifle (and were playing against people who didn't know you could get up there or how to get you down), you could get quite a few kills before killing yourself or jumping down in order to reload.

"Relic" is a map situated on an island with a makeshift base in the centre consisting of an extremely tall Forerunner relic. Human prop-up-covers are placed on the map strategically. By pushing one (through melees) to the base of the relic, standing on the folded-down handle on the defenders' side of the cover (located on the ground to give the shield stability), and firing a handheld rocket launcher rocket directly into the shield, the explosive force that tilts the shield forward - and therefore the handle up to lift you off the ground - is enough to launch you high enough to get on top of the relic. Even more amusing is because of how high you really are, the horizon doesn't exist anymore - there is the end of the ocean polygons and the end of the skybox texture, separated by a thick black line. However, because of the massive blast damage the game gives you for rocket explosion proximity, one has to start the match so that player shield (health) capacity is increased three-fold (Overshield).

In the campaign, one grenade jump will allow the player to skip the entire first half of "Outskirts" as well as reach nearly all of the otherwise unreachable areas.

Halo 3 sometimes requires it to collect hidden bonus items. It should also be noted that this should only be done with frag grenades in these games. Plasma grenades, spike grenades, and rockets will kill you instantly if you try to pull this.

Since this was the only way to jump in the earlier Marathon (aside from ramping off stairs,) it was required for many later levels. Marathon also allowed normal gunfire recoil to amplify existing jumps, known as gun-climbing.

This is what many players thought "frog blast the vent core" meant.

The flamethrower can do this on low gravity maps, since its kick is stronger than the reduced gravity. Simply point it down, hold the trigger, and presto! Improvised Jet Pack. Some physics model Game Mods would enhance this by giving the flamethrower negative recoil and increasing it several fold to give it more of a jetpack-like quality.

In Half-Life 2: Episode 2, there is a point where you must do a grenade jump (protected by a metal plate, as Gordon is not that dumb) if you want that rocket launcher. Succeeding earns you an achievement - Gordon Propelled Rocket.

It's impossible to do this with the rocket launcher, though - you go up maybe three feet, and you lose about a third of your health.

In Battlefield Vietnam, grenades sent players flying to when hit by one. One day it was discovered that friendly players were affected by this as well when friendly fire was off. The best results happened when a friendly player laid down on a grenade, which sent another player flying upwards. Combined with the ability to instantly deploy a parachute to avoid fall damage this tactic was used to fly over walls and on top of buildings. This was later patched by taking away all force to grenades, meaning that corpses and players stayed put when killed. In later Battlefield games this was fixed by making grenades damage all players.

This is known as C4 Jumping in Battlefield 2. With Friendly Fire off, players can dump all 5 C4 packs on the ground, stand a little in front, and blast away! The tallest buildings can be reached in a single bound. This can also be done with manned friendly vehicles, and with enough C4 players and proper timing, such a loaded vehicle can literally fly across the entire map, which could take ten minutes to cross on foot, in seconds.

In Battlefield 1942, someone once used a similar method to jump over a large windmill in a Jeep. In addition, artillery shells sent corpses flying - or, occasionally, living soldiers. They usually died on landing, but it was possible to parachute to safety if the player is fast enough.

In Dark Forces you can lay down a mine, stand on top of it, and use the resulting explosion to access higher areas, or places you aren't supposed to see that exist for technical reasons.

Painkiller disables rocket-jumping in the single-player mode, requiring the player to use other, more creative means to find the secrets. In multiplayer, on the other hand, the game has a dedicated button for rocketjumping.

Daikatana took rocket jumping to the extremes. The game featured 4 episodes, each with its own unique set of weapons, and every weapon set had more than one weapon capable of rocket jumping (from traditional explosives like rocket launchers and C4, to a burst-firing shotgun with ridiculous recoil, a Ballista, magical staffs shooting meteors, and another shotgun with an underbarrel grenade launcher).

Warsow, being designed as a faster-paced Quake has a Rocket Jump which can be done with a rocket launcher, instagib and a gun blade. In some modes, self-damage is removed.

At some point, somebody realized that the Splash Damage from the Phoenix in Perfect Dark (which is fairly minor compared to other explosives) could be used to propel the player forward at greater than normal speeds. This has little utility outside of speedruns, though.

Dystopia allows you to Rocket Jump in meatspace as well as cyberspace. The latter is much more important in building up speed, and occasionally in getting past obstacles, though only on one map is it required to get past something.

In Borderlands is it possible to throw the default, non-modded grenade down at your feet to give yourself a boost. In the Claptrap's Robot Revolution DLC for the first game, there's a chest near the entrance to the last area that could be only be reached via grenade-jump. A few hidden chests are hidden this way in latter games.

Rocket jumps in Serious Sam provide hardly any horizontal push when compared to games like Quake, so they are mostly used for vertical boosts over walls. The distance you receive depends on how much health you lose, not a damage total of health and armor lost. In short, this means that armor-less players will receive more distance than players with armor.

Junkrat's Concussion Mine, which can be used to give him to propel him upwards. Unlike other examples, he doesn't take damage from this.

Conversed by Pharah, who has a rocket launcher but also has a jetpack, rendering this trope unnecessary for her. One of her voice lines is "Rocket Jump? That sounds dangerous."note It is still entirely possible to rocket jump, albeit to very low heights, as Pharah, and can occasionally be seen when one is in trouble with their jetpack on cooldown. Usually it doesn't work and just results in death.

A Bastion with its Tank Mode ultimate ready can use its cannon shells to bound over walls and other obstacles, resulting in airborne robot tanks bombarding surprised enemies from above.

Zarya can use her weapon's alt-fire (which lobs an explosive charge instead of a continuous laser beam) to boost herself up slightly. It doesn't give her nearly the amount of lift that, say, Junkrat's mine does, but it does open up a couple new pathways for sneaky flanking attacks.

Soldier: 76 can use his helix rockets. Combining this with his sprint ability lets him get to places he previously couldn't, moreso than Zarya.

Action-Adventure

In The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess you can do a bomb jump by dropping a bomb and powering up one of your jumping techniques. If you time it just right, you can reach various ledges you weren't meant to walk on. Most of the time falling out of bounds though as the ground isn't completely solid up there.

On the other hand, the other kind of bomb-jumping used in The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (using a bomb to propel you horizontally, ignoring pits and other hazards), while not required, was useful in a couple stages—at the least, Dark World Level 3 to escape from that one room (you know the one), and in Ganon's Tower to access a faerie spring. A lot of romhacks of the game do require it, to the annoyance of No Damage Runners.

In Shadow of the Colossus, some creative players have used the exploding arrows to reach otherwise inaccessible parts of the world, similar to the Zelda examples.

Not done with a rocket, but in Sonic Adventure, Amy Rose can use her hammer to jump further than she can normally.

In the Special Edition of Devil May Cry 4, Lady's double jump is just her shooting Kalina Ann into the floor or ground while she's in the air.

In Monster HunterGenerations, Light Bowgun users have access to a special move called "Bullet Geyser" which is basically a rocket jump in all but name. The one difference is that unlike most incarnations of the trope, the hunter isn't damaged by the blast.

MMORPGs

Goblins in World of Warcraft can use the rockets on their tool belts to propel themselves forward, engineers also get shot straight up if their rocket boots (Normally a running speed increase) malfunction

Cannoneers in MapleStory have Cannon Jump, which has the added bonus of not damaging the character.

Tristana of League of Legends has this as her 2nd spell in which she propels herself into the air and causes AoE damage where she lands, With no damage to herself, though its a risky move to use, often leaving her open to attack. Her Yordle counterpart, Ziggs, has a Satchel Charge that can be reactivated so he or any enemies can go flying. Only difference is that Ziggs will fly further and take no damage.

Engineers in Guild Wars 2 can do this when armed with a rifle. Not only does it not damage the player, it's used to Goomba Stomp whoever's beneath them when they land.

Platform Game

Metroid has Samus' Bomb Jump, which is used in her Morph Ball form. It's often the only way to jump in that form, or normal ball-jumping isn't available until later. Unlike the other examples, this doesn't hurt Samus.

There are two peculiar intricacies to the Morph Ball Bomb: they can be laid in midair, and they don't obey gravity. This results in a technique known as the Double Bomb Jump, which requires timing bombs so that she gets propelled up to a midair bomb just as it goes off, propelling her even further. In some of the Metroid games, it's possible to do a triple, or even unlimited bomb jump, with the right timing of bomb placement and the bomb-restock counter.

In Super Smash Bros. Melee and Brawl, the bomb move can be used for recovery.

Metroid Prime: Hunters also includes a bona fide Rocket Jump: if Samus fires a missile (or certain other weapons) at the ground, she takes damage and gets knocked into the air a bit. This is useful for Sequence Breaking and speed running. It doesn't work in the console Metroid Prime games (but in turn, most of the good tricks in those games don't work in Hunters).

In Jazz Jackrabbit 2 you can use the Rocket powerups to propel yourself along 2 walls if they are next to each other, as a kind of Wall Jump.

One of the logbooks in action/strategy/platformer Iji describes an alien military game where one player wearing ridiculously heavy armor is thrown into the air by rockets and other explosive munitions; it even mentions juggling the player with rockets. This is a not-so-subtle hint to get hit by enemy attacks and use your own Splash Damage to fling yourself into otherwise inaccessible areas. To reach one secret area you must blow yourself up nine times (The very first thing you get upon reaching that area is a dialog from Iji: "THAT HURT!!"). In a less extreme application, you can use the recoil of the Nuke weapon to hurl yourself across gaps with too little headroom to jump over.

Technically possible to achieve in Spelunky, although since bombs generally do around 30 to 50 damage in a game where you're unlikely to ever have more than 10 health, you'd be better served just using a rope. Still, custom maps occasionally make use of this.

"Flint jumps" are a traditional part of races and method to bypass obstacles in battles in Clonk. With timed explosives (and a lot of health) it's possible to do a (mostly horizontally-propelling) mid-air flint jump as well. There's also a fan-made scenario where players compete to see who can blow themselves the furthest.

In Nefarious, Crow can bounce off of his own grenades to reach higher locations. Justified in that his Powered Armor absorbs the shock of the explosions.

Role Playing Game

One of the bomb parts in Custom Robo is made for this: It does no damage, has the highest possible recoil, and fires at your feet.

In Dungeons of Dredmor, this is one of the skills granted to you by the Clockwork Knight skill. You take a bit of fire damage when taking off, but so do all the monsters around you, and you can also damage and stun any monster in the space in which you land.

Third-Person Shooter

In Warframe, the Grineer-created Tonkor grenade launcher is designed for this. The gimmick kind of falls short, given how generous the game's movement system is normally; it's usually faster and easier to just use parkour instead of a grenade jump. However, the gimmick does end up giving it an edge over its Corpus cousin, the Penta: a well-modded weapon deals enough damage to down a Tenno in a heartbeat, so the Tonkor's self-damage was reduced to almost nothing, allowing the user to survive a grenade jump and making the weapon infinitely safer to wield than its counterparts.

Tower Defense

Plants vs. Zombies: The Prospector Zombie does this with a stack of TNT strapped to his leg. It launches him to the end of the yard, where he turns around and starts eating your plants from behind.

Wide Open Sandbox

This is possible, but very tricky, in Minecraft. Unless it's an adventure map, you'd be better off just placing a couple blocks and making a stairway. However, using a splash potion of harming can double your jump height and is much safer than the previously suggested TNT.

The "Rhino boost" in the Grand Theft Auto games (from III onwards) is a variation on this. When driving the Rhino tank, you can turn the turret around so that it is pointed behind you. The recoil created by firing the cannon provides you with a speed boost, which easily turns one of the slowest vehicles in the game into one of the fastest. Combine that with the fact that any vehicle that the Rhino so much as bumps into explodes, as well as the vehicle's astounding durability, and the Rhino practically becomes a Game-Breaker. San Andreasnerfed this ability, though it came back in the later Stories games.

Non-video game examples:

Anime and Manga

In an episode of Digimon Tamers, Gargomon uses his cannons to do a rocket jump to the top of a skyscraper.

Kallen in Code Geass uses her Guren's Radiant Wave to jump after the Lancelot on at least one occasion. The Lancelot itself seems to be able to use its slash harkens to vault itself into the air before it gets a flight module.

One of the Juppongatana in Rurouni Kenshin used dynamite both as an offensive weapon and to boost him into the air, whereupon he used what amounted to a batsuit to glide.

In the original Dragon Ball, Goku fired a Kamehameha Wave down at the ground to propel himself through the air during his fight with King Piccolo.

The opening for the second season of the Kono Subarashii Sekai ni Shukufuku o! anime contains two examples. First, Darkness stacks an iron door on top of some explosive monsters and has the party stand on the door. Detonating the monsters launches the party into the sky. Seconds later, Megumin casts her explosion magic, and Aqua catches the backdraft in her raiment, slowing the party's descent.

In an episode of My Hero Academia, Izuku uses mines from a minefield to propel himself to the leading position in a race, however, he uses a part of a fallen robot as a shield to protect himself from the blast.

Film

In Tokyo Gore Police, Ruka gears up for battle by hauling a rocket launcher onto her shoulder, then plants it into the ground to leap up a skyscraper.

Tested in a few different ways by the Mythbusters, including the 'use an explosion to propel a jumping human' and 'use an explosion to cushion a fall' variants. Understandably, neither method worked in the slightest.

Used in an episode of The Librarians 2014, where a strange mix of quantum computing and magic has overlaid Real Life with a video game. Thus, video game tropes override the laws of physics. When the team needs to get across a chasm, Ezekiel suggests tossing grenades under the jumpers to propel them to the other side. When Baird (an ex-soldier) hears this, she screams "Grenades don't work that way!" Ezekiel counters that they do in video games. And yes, it works just fine. They don't even suffer any damage.

Newspaper Comics

Mafalda does it with a siphon bottle that's used in making alcoholic beverages' she plays with it like she were a spacewoman, and so do her friends... Here◊'s a pic.

Freddie Wong has a video literally called "Rocket Jump", where he recreates a Team Fortress 2-style rocket jump in order to bypass a mounted machine gun using VFX.

He has also since named his production company Rocket Jump, sorry if you were looking for that instead of the trope.

In The Adventures of Riot Shield Man and Knife Man...Guy, Riot Shield Man performed a rocket jump in order to riot shield Justin Bieber's helicopter. His teammates then question why he didn't use the rocket launcher to shoot down the helicopter.

Western Animation

Referenced in a Robot Chicken skit where one of Santa Claus's reindeers attempts to rescue a little boy from a well through tactical use of hand grenades. The reindeer loses his own legs in the process, and the little boy is rescued by actual EMT workers.

The Secret Saturdays: In "Where Lies the Engulfer", Zak uses the blast from one of Doyle's grenades to propel himself through a skylight.

The Orion Engine, a proposed starship drive that could be built with today's technology, which does this with nukes. The ship is protected by a large shield (the "pusher plate") and some enormous shock absorbers. The pusher plate is in turn protected from the heat by spraying oil onto it between shots. Sadly, the Orion Engine falls under current laws banning nukes in space, so we're giving up one of our only currently technologically feasible methods of near lightspeed travel... if you consider 5% the speed of light "near".

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